Newt News

As 2017 approaches, it's almost time for Newt OS 17. Here are some changes to expect:

Calamares InstallerNewt OS 17 will use the Calamares installer, in place of the now-unsupported YaST live-installer. Calamares has done well in testing, and is better suited to Newt OS. Many thanks to the Gecko Linux project for working with Calamares and making it usable with openSUSE systems.

Rolling Release, LTS, and release modelNewt OS will continue to offer both a rolling-release and LTS build, based on openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap respectively.

Desktop EnvironmentWhile Loki was a fun project this past year, I have decided to effectively end it. Maintaining a Frankenstein desktop environment is not easy, and as I do not have the capabilities to maintain all the required components, Loki will no longer be the default. Those with installations already running Loki will get any updates for both Mate components and Vala-Panel as they are released, but Newt OS 17 will no longer ship with Loki. I have opted instead to use LXQt, customized to what I consider good and sane defaults. LXQt, like Loki and LXDE, is quite modular, and I will be taking advantage of this in the future.

Release DateNewt OS 17 will ship sometime before January. This initial release will likely only be for the Leap-based release. Both releases will be available by the end of January, and will contain much of the software that Newt OS 16 currently does. This software is designed to be a curated collection of the best creative and productive software available for Linux. One downside of including this software is that the download size for the ISO file is rather large. If there is demand for a minimal ISO, I can spin one up, but I don't plan to unless there is a demand.